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inovio pharmaceuticals inc (INO) Details

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc., a clinical stage biopharmaceutical company, develops active DNA immunotherapies and vaccines in combination with proprietary electroporation delivery devices to prevent and treat cancers and infectious diseases. The company’s SynCon immunotherapy design has the ability to break the immune system’s tolerance of cancerous cells; and SynCon product design is also intended to facilitate cross-strain protection against known, as well as new unmatched strains of pathogens, such as influenza. It has completed, current or planned clinical programs of its proprietary SynCon immunotherapies for HPV-caused pre-cancers and cancers, prostate cancer, breast/lung/pancreatic cancer, hepatitis C virus, hepatitis B virus, HIV, influenza, and Ebola. Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. has collaborative development agreement with GeneOne Life Sciences to co-develop an Ebola vaccine through phase I clinical trials. Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. was founded in 1979 and is headquartered in Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania.

inovio pharmaceuticals inc (INO) Key Developments

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced that it has initiated a phase I trial to evaluate Inovio's DNA immunotherapy in men with biochemically relapsed prostate cancer. The launch of this human trial follows strong pre-clinical results revealing that INO-5150 generated robust CD8+ T cell responses in animal studies including non-human primates. The immune responses generated by INO-5150 were similar in character to immune responses generated by VGX-3100, Inovio's immunotherapy for human papillomavirus (HPV) that regressed pre-cancerous cervical lesions and eliminated HPV in a randomized, placebo-controlled phase II trial. INO-5150 is a novel SynCon immunotherapy for prostate cancer targeting two antigens, prostate specific antigen (PSA) and prostate specific membrane antigen (PSMA), present in the majority of prostate cancer cells. This phase I study will evaluate the safety, tolerability, and immunogenicity of INO-5150 alone or in combination with INO-9012, Inovio's DNA-based IL-12 immune activator. The multi-centered study will also evaluate changes in PSA levels, an important biomarker in prostate cancer. INO-5150 was generated using Inovio's proprietary SynCon process to enable significant production of PSA and PSMA antigens with genetic sequences differentiated from native human PSA and PSMA sequences.

Inovio Pharmaceuticals, Inc. announced it will advance its DNA vaccine for MERS (Middle East Respiratory Syndrome) into a phase I clinical trial in healthy volunteers in a collaboration with GeneOne Life Science Inc. Inovio and GeneOne will conduct a phase I trial to evaluate the safety, tolerability and immunogenicity of Inovio's DNA-based MERS vaccine. The companies are currently conducting pre-IND activities and plan to start the clinical study before year end of 2015. GeneOne will conduct and fund the clinical study in return for milestone-based co-ownership of the immunotherapy. Upon successful completion of the study, the companies plan to jointly seek additional third party support and resources to further develop and commercialize this product. In preclinical tests, INO-4500 showed robust and durable immune responses. Animals vaccinated with INO-4500 generated strong neutralizing antibodies and robust CD8+ T cells to MERS antigens. These findings are vital given the importance of neutralizing antibodies in preventing infection and the role T cells play in clearing infection by killing cells that harbor the virus. T-cell responses against multiple strains of MERS virus. Inovio's SynCon technology has the ability to activate immune responses against multiple disease-specific antigens and elicit broad protection against diverse unmatched strains of pathogens in humans. These DNA-based immunotherapy products have shown a favorable safety profile in clinical studies to date.

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